Date: 2006.2.16 (Thu) 13:00-14:15
Place: General Research Building, Room 663
Speaker: Daiki Amanai
Title: "Structure-advocates" and Bunri-ha(Secessionist Architects) in Japan, 1915-1920
Keywords: sensibility constrained by the times, frameworks of thoughts, connection with state, nation or society, the two-fold division between structure and art, architectural history through textual analysis

Affiliation: Aesthetics, Division of General Culture, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology
Position: Graduate Student
Adviser: Tanehisa Otabe
Disciplines: thoughts in art, modern Japan, modern architectural history
Societies and Conferences: The Japanese Society for Aesthetics, Architectural Institute of Japan

Bibliography: Daiki Amanai, "Structure-advocates" and Bunri-ha(Secessionist Architects) in Japan, 1915-1920, Human Science Integration Seminar Abstracts, No. 16, pp. 1, 2006.
(Please use this bibliography when you cite this abstract.)

Abstract:
This study clarifies theoretical backgrounds behind the founding of Bunriha Kenchiku Kai (Secessionist Architectural Group) in 1920. This movement was organized by the six students who were to graduate the Division of Architecture, Imperial University of Tokyo. Their main adversary was "Kozo-ha"(Structure-advocates) architects. One of their teachers Sano Toshikata devalued “art” in his own nationalistic view of architecture. And Sano’s follower Noda Toshihiko, whose paper was titled “Architecture is Not Art”, depended on theories of structural dynamics to integrate architectural design. Against them Bunriha architect Horiguchi Sutemi, who has been seen as a theoretical leader in the group, asserted “life” and “faith” in one’s instinct. But according to him, buildings were like reflections of “self/life”. This framework is affected by art movements in those days and there was a preceding architect whom similar views affected. In contrast to them, another Bunriha architect Morita Keiichi was remarkable. He discovered “inner want” in the “beauty of dynamics” after completion of a building. However, his relatively exquisite understanding of expression went unrecognized because most architects in Japan interpreted architecture via two viewpoints, “art” and “science”. This framework had been already apparently shown since western notion of architecture was introduced to Japan.